Erika Meriaux

STUDIO 13  http://www.erikameriauxart.com

I am a figurative painter. My medium is oil on canvas, and my current body of work is contemporary reinterpretation of Greek myths.

I have been appealed by this topic for many reasons but my first concern was the role women occupied in mythology. Greek myths relate real events that have actually happened but have been modified by oral transmission (many searchers thinks for example that Homer’s Iliad was recited by heart and has been transmitted from a generation to another before being written down ).

Giving a closer look to Mythology helps to understand how women were considered. Greek civilization (among Judaism and Christianity) has given shape to the current occidental culture and its way of thinking, We are still living under the influences of patriarchal rules even if women conditions have improved (recently, but are subject to be jeopardized any time by conservatism such as religious fanatics or antiabortion lobbies, etc… ).

Greek laws suggest how men managed to have a complete control over women’ life from birth to death: their status were barely above slaves’. Greek myths show that women had very few options in many aspects of their existence: mythological tales relate rapes, seductions, abductions as glorious and heroic facts (actually during wars, women were often considered as the best part of a booty)… The ultimate options to escape were often death or magic metamorphosis. Very few women could have control over their sexual , sentimental, financial lives, and to do so they had to find elaborate stratagems that can even be considered as evil.